


As Your Maker, I Release You

by TeyrianTimelord



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), True Blood
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, Implied Sexual Content, No True Blood Characters, Red Room, Romance, True Blood AU, Vampire AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:59:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7791409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeyrianTimelord/pseuds/TeyrianTimelord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forty years after setting her free, Bucky finally finds Natasha. </p><p>They both remember everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Your Maker, I Release You

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually a prompt thedr3gs gave me forever ago and I'm only just now jumping on it. I have a four hour flight and way too many Buckynat feels, so this mess happened. Enjoy!

Natasha could sense him before he even walked in the door. It didn't matter that he had released her forty years ago, she could feel him in her blood. It didn't matter that she had spent decades looking to fill the void left in her heart. Years roaming the world looking for a new purpose, but nothing made up for the emptiness he left in her. She was a better person, no longer a weapon to be used by warmongering humans. She could make her own choices, make her own life, but it had still felt hollow. Until now. He must have sensed it too, because he was suddenly there before her, standing in the doorway of Merlotte's while everyone around them gaped. He just stood there, blood welled in his eyes, and Natasha dropped the tray of drinks she had been carrying, glass and soda flying everywhere. She didn't care. She didn't care about anything. It had been a lifetime.

 

_Natalia was anxious, nearly frightened, but did not show it. Fear was not an option, not now. She had come so far, overcome so much. It was too late to turn back, or even glance behind at what was to become her old life. This was the reward for all her hard work: death. She didn't know the man with the metal arm standing in front of her. Could she call him a man and not a monster? That was the point of all this; to make her into a monster. "I'm sorry," he said, soberly, sincerely, as he swept the hair away from her neck, cold steel fingers brushing her skin. "Don't be," she replied. She could not show fear. Fear was not an option, not now._

_There were too many people watching. Red Room directors and instructors, officials and important politicians from the Kremlin. This was supposed to be a private affair, the most intimate of all connections ever made. It wasn't right. But when had things ever been right? She seemed so certain, so ready, but he could hear in her pulse that she was not. She thought this was what she wanted, but it was really all just thoughts they had put in her head. She was just a pawn, and in his eyes, like every other human in this place, just a child. Neither of them deserved this._

_"This is going to hurt."_

_"I know."_

_"Are you ready?"_

_"Yes."_

_There should have been more, but there wasn't. She crossed her arms behind her back and closed her eyes. His fangs found her artery, but she barely flinched. They had prepared her for this and it made him ill. A girl so young should not have been so ready to give her life. He could feel her strength die by the second. In a matter of moments her knees buckled and he had to take her in his arms to keep her from hitting the floor. She used what he knew was the last of her life to weakly attempt to raise her arm, reaching for something no one else could see. He paused and lifted his head for only a moment, marveling at her outstretched fingers. He knew it was her last touch of humanity, floating out of her grasp. He used his teeth to pull the glove off his natural hand and wove his fingers through hers. It shocked him how warm she still was. For everything they had destroyed in him, he couldn't let her die alone, even if all he could offer was colder than the air around them. She weakly grasped his hand, and he took what was left of her life._

 

"James," Natasha murmured, reaching up to touch her hand to his cheek. "I-"

 

He didn't let her finish. With speed she would need decades more to achieve, he swept her up in his arms and bolted out of the bar.

 

_Natalia ran this way and that, throwing herself into the four padded walls of her cell. She couldn't stand it. The hunger in her gut felt like a thousand hornets had been sewn into her abdomen. Every muscle ached to run free. It was a torture she had never known before._

_"You need to relax," James ordered sternly._

_"I need to eat," she moaned. "I'm dying."_

_She saw him roll his eyes._

_"You hunted last night. And you're not dying, Natalia, you're already dead."_

_"Don't talk to me like I'm a child," she snapped, forgetting that he was not only her maker but her superior officer as well._

_It was a mistake. Before she could blink, he had his metal hand wrapped around her throat, pinning her to the wall and squeezing tightly enough to crush her esophagus. If she was still human, it would have killed her. She didn't need to breathe, but she could still feel pain, and her voice was gone._

_"Then don't act like a child," he growled. "There is only so much I can teach you. You have to learn to control your impulses and take orders again or they will make me put you down."_

_They both knew that fact already, but it hurt to hear him say it. It took all of Natalia's willpower to keep from bursting into bloody tears. Her whole body was fighting against her and she didn't know how to make it stop. She was used to being under the control of others, following orders to the letter, surrendering her autonomy, killing on command without question. She was a good soldier and a good spy, that was all she had ever been and all she had to cling to. She could whisper it into the darkness at night, like a bedtime prayer, but now that was gone. Natalia truly was nothing, and she had not seen that coming._

_James saw the distress in her eyes that went far beyond just her physical pain, and released his hold on her throat. She fell to the ground, choking. It wasn't fair. She was barely a week old. The Red Room was asking too much of him, too much of her. It took months to adjust to the change, years to master total control. He himself had been turned for nearly five years before he could hear a human pulse without dropping fang, and even then that had been expedited by the brutal conditioning the Red a Room forced him through. He wanted better for her, but he knew there wasn't a prayer._

_"I don't know how," she whimpered, finally regaining her speech. "I don't know what to do."_

_He knelt down next to her, putting a hand on her back as gently as he could. A part of him wished he had gotten to meet her before she turned. They had made him watch her, of course, her and all the other girls, made him design the tests to choose which protégé would be given life after death. She surprised him with her talents. Some of the candidates were born and bred spies who came from many generations of Russian espionage experts. She was the little orphan girl picked up from the streets of Moscow, and she had beaten them all. He remembered the day they brought her in, promising a newer, better life only to break her down and rebuild her from scratch. He hadn't taken much notice then, hadn't cared about just another cog in the Red Room's killing machine. As she grew older and stronger, she was a marvel but nothing more. He wished he had spoken to her, known which voice in her head was her' sand which one was theirs. It didn't matter now. Everything she had been was nothing more than a ghost now. It was his job to raise her, train her, brainwash her all over again. He didn't want to. He remembered what it was like when he was newly turned, abandoned by a maker he didn't know, taken by the Red Room before he even had his first taste of blood. He remembered what would happen to them both if he failed to do the same to Natalia._

 

They were deep in the woods by the time he stopped running, standing on the edge of the pond that was Bon Temps' only swimming hole. The moonlight glistened on the top of the water, but it was nothing compared to the starlight gleaming in James' eyes. Natasha shifted anxiously in her sneakers. She wanted to embrace him and never let go, not again, not ever again, but she couldn't move. They just stood completely motionless, staring at each other.

 

"How did you escape?" she finally asked, shattering the silence.

 

"I didn't," he answered bluntly. "An old friend set me free."

 

There was no emotion in his voice, either of their voices, really. Natasha was feeling too much to show just one, a trait she picked up from him.

 

"How did you find me?"

 

"Help. A few acquaintances of yours in New York tipped me off that you went on a mission in Louisiana and never came back." He finally gave a small, almost undetectable smile. "I have to say, I didn't expect to find you waiting tables in a backwoods pit stop."

 

She smiled back.

 

"It's not so bad."

 

_James tried to tell them she wasn't ready. They hadn't listened. He tried to tell them that even after seven months there was no telling whether or not she could control herself in the field. They hadn't listened. They had instructed him to handle her. As her maker, she was at his beck and call. Surely he could command her to stop if things got out of hand. What he didn't tell them, what he couldn't tell them, was that if she turned the mission into a bloodbath, he might not be able to control himself. Vampires twice his age could not resist the temptation of thirty bleeding throats, rich with the scent of fear and sweet with the taste of dying breaths. He should have told them. It would have been better that way. But there was nothing he could about it now. Nothing but try and fail to resist his primal instincts. Natalia was beaming, smiling from ear to ear, laughing gleefully as blood spilled down her chin and all over the front of her previously white dress. She was supposed to assassinate only one, but couldn't help herself. He could feel the pure joy radiating from her very core. She had never felt so alive._

_He had tried to stop her. He had burst in, the words, "as your maker, I command you..." already on his lips, but instead he was overcome with the intensity of if all. The sight, the smell, the sound, the pure, overwhelming strength of his progeny's raw elation was irresistible. Instead of fighting her, he kissed her, and it was the most electric thing he'd ever felt. They killed them all, drained them all, together. When there was nothing left to the humans, they turned to each other, lapping up any hot blood left on cold skin. Natalia was more beautiful than he had ever seen her. She wasn't a soldier, she wasn't a spy, she wasn't the Black Widow, she was just a paragon of true nature. He couldn't keep his hands off her, and she wasn't going to let him anyway. They were both still too high on the thrill, all judgement and self-control lost. There was a tiny voice in the back of his head telling him this would be the end if he didn't regain his composure, but it silenced when Natalia shoved him to the ground and he didn't fight back. Suddenly it wasn't just instinct or hunger or bloodlust, and they paused for the briefest of moments. It was desperation. It was the realization that the Red Room had starved them of so much more than just fresh blood. Touch. It hit them both at once just how much they craved it and that this was their first and perhaps only chance. He pulled off her dress and she ripped his shirt away. Decades of emptiness, manipulation, and abuse came crashing down around them and there was nothing to do but seek solace in each other. He murmured her name over and over again, like a hymn, like a prayer, like a promise. She finally stopped him by putting a hand to his lips, and he could see in her eyes that her faculties were back and everything she meant, she meant for real._

_"I love you."_

_For the first time in forty  years, he felt human._

 

Natasha's fingers twitched. She still wanted nothing more than to throw her arms around him and relearn the lines of his body. He couldn't be the same after all this time, she sure as hell wasn't, and the ache in her heart that came from being unfamiliar with her maker hurt almost as much as the night she turned. But she had control now. Like he had promised, she had learned.

 

"What's it like being a waitress?" he asked lightly.

 

She laughed, but it stabbed them both. They weren't made for small talk. This moment should have been so much more. But she knew it was necessary. Even though he no longer held the same power over her that he once did, she could still feel tendrils of emotion. He was hurting. He was hurting so much. Their eyes said everything they needed to, and in the same moment they folded into each other's arms.

 

_"No, don't!" James shouted, kicking and flailing and fighting with every fiber of his being against the guards despite the silver chains burning through his skin. "It wasn't her fault!"_

_"Grave mistakes do not go without consequences. You know this, Soldier," the headmistress stated coldly._

_Natalia sat silently, eyes wide with fear and dripping blood from the pain of the silver wrapped around her neck and over her mouth. The headmistress looked back and forth between them both._

_"Obedience is paramount, and you have demonstrated that Romanova has none," the woman continued. "She is expendable, you are not. We will try again with another candidate. Command her to stake herself."_

_"Absolutely not," James growled._

_"Do it, or I'll have your fangs and put her down myself."_

_He had no doubt of what would happen to him upon refusal. She was right, he was not expendable. The Red Room had invested too much in him to throw everything away over a few innocent lives lost and a tryst with an underling. They would keep him alive, keep him useful, but they would make damn sure he learned what it meant to belong to them. And his punishment started with giving Natalia the true death. He had heard it said amongst the headmistress and her lackeys that the death of a progeny was the worst pain a vampire could ever feel. He looked over at Natalia, desperately locking eyes with her. He needed her support. He needed to know that she would understand everything that was about to happen and what they both needed to do, but he saw nothing in her gaze but fear. God, she was so scared and she tried so hard to hide it, even at the end._

_“Take off her silver,” James finally said, defeated._

_The headmistress’ henchmen obliged, removing the sticky chains away from Natalia’s simmering flesh and tossing a wooden stake at her feet. They didn’t bother to add any other restraints; she was too weak to walk, let alone fight back. The lower half of her face was barely holding together, but he knew she would heal soon. Soon…_

_“Natalia Alianova Romanova,” he hissed. “As your maker…”_

_“James, please,” she whimpered weakly. Between the singed cheeks and blood tears, her face was nearly unrecognizable. “Please don’t do this.”_

_“As your maker, I release you.”_

_All hell broke loose. There were screams of pain and orders being shouted furiously. More guards than he could count descended on the room, but there was the unmistakable smell of human death. Even when weakened to the point of death, he knew Natalia was strong enough to fight. Fight, feed, and escape. He tried to look through the crowd of men, to find his spider in the mess of bodies, but the guards controlling his silver restraints forced him to his knees, and the headmistress blocked his view. Even in the buzzing, rolling hell that Natalia was making of her guards, the woman was nothing but stone. In her left hand was a pair of pliers. She had made a promise and had come to collect, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop her._

_All he could do was keep his wish at the front of his mind and hope that whatever bond he had left with Natalia would hold long enough for her to feel it._

_Run. If you ever loved me, run. You have your chance and one day I will have mine. I promise I will find you again one day. Please, for the love of God, run._

They sat on the dock with their bare feet hanging down into the water, not caring if every once in a while a little fish surfaced to nibble at their toes. Natasha leaned her head on his good shoulder, taking in comfort of just being able to touch him again. She knew he had been alive all this time, she could feel it, and the guilt of running never went away. She had survived by telling herself that it was what he wanted, but deep down in her unbeating heart she knew she never should have left without him. But the nightmare was over now, wasn’t it? He was here and that was all she cared about.

 

“I love you, James,” she said out of nowhere, leaning up to kiss his cheek.

He chuckled.

 

“You know, now that I think about it, you were the last person to ever call me that,” he mused almost absentmindedly.

 

Natasha raised an eyebrow.

 

“Well, what are people calling you, then?”

 

“Bucky.”

 

He looked down at her expectantly, waiting for her reaction. After so long apart, they would have to start with small steps. Even after all they had been through, they were both still so young and forty years was a long time to be without the other half of your heart. Soon, Natasha would ask him all about what happened in the Red Room after she fled and the adventures that had accompanied and followed his escape. But right now, his new name would do.

 

“I’ll call you anything you want as long as I can also call you mine,” she answered.

 

He laughed.

 

“ _You_ are _mine,_ Romanova, and I’m never letting you go again.”


End file.
